One of the most common areas of confusion is exactly how Article Marketing works to drive traffic to a website. The answer probably has more levels than you would think, and a better understanding of how Article Marketing works can help you know what to expect.
Recently I received this question from a reader:
“I have asked several “experts” this question and not been convinced of the answers. My question is in relation to the tactic of using article marketing to drive traffic. If the target market does not utilise popular article directories as a source of information then is there any point in spending time submitting to directories? If keyword searches in article directories do not display information in the market niche can one assume that this format in not applicable to the niche?”
Those are some great questions–let’s go through them one by one…
“If the target market does not utilise popular article directories as a source of information then is there any point in spending time submitting to directories?”
Yes, there is–Although people may find your articles on an article directory, Article Marketing drives traffic to a website primarily through an increase in search engine ranking for your website’s keywords.
An increased search engine rank can build traffic dramatically for the long term.
For example, if a person does a search on Google, Yahoo or any other search engine for the keyword terms associated with your website, and if your website comes up high in the rankings (say #1 or #2 or somewhere in the top 10, which would put it on the front page of results listings), then you will receive more traffic to your website than if your site appeared lower in the rankings.
Put yourself in the position of a search engine customer–when you do a search for something on Google and other SEs, you tend to just look at the first page of results–rarely would anyone go through 5 or 10 pages of results.
If you get past the 2nd page and you still haven’t found the info you’re looking for, most people will simply figure that they need to use different search terms. They will start over typing different words into Google’s search box.
So, any website that shows up on the first page of results in Google or any other search engine will have a marked advantage in getting more traffic.
This is why people do article marketing–by consistently submitting articles on the topic of your website, you build links to your website and also are able to create a library of niche specific content that is linking back to your site (each time your article is republished, your resource box will be also, and that is how you build the links).
So, let’s go back to your question–”If the target market does not utilise popular article directories as a source of information then is there any point in spending time submitting to directories?”
Yes, because even if your target market is not doing searches on a particular article directory, they are most certainly doing search engine searches (on Google, Yahoo, etc).
Your article marketing campaign is meant to elevate your search engine rankings for your keyword terms, thereby sending you more traffic from Google, Yahoo, etc.
If keyword searches in article directories do not display information in the market niche can one assume that this format in not applicable to the niche?
I hope I’m understanding your question correctly, and please correct me if I’m not–but if you’re asking what I think you’re asking the answer would be “no”, because again the place where your target market would be doing keyword searches would be in search engines like Google. Whenever someone does a search for a keyword term in Google there will always be a result–your object is to have your website rank highly in the results in Google.
On the article directory itself, you will submit your article to the category that best matches your topic. Most article directories will have an assortment of general categories, and you would pick the one that matches most closely (for example, if your topic was ‘dogs’, you would choose the ‘pets’ category).
I wouldn’t worry so much about how things are arranged on the article directory itself.
The article directory is not the end of the line–it’s just the beginning.
The article directory is the hub from which publishers will find your article and then republish it on their sites (thereby building even more links to your site).
So, when you submit an article to a directory, you are not just building one link–you are placing your article on the free market in a location that is a hive of activity.
Lots of publishers use free reprint articles on their sites, and they go to various article directories (or do a search on Google) looking for articles that are on the topic of their particular website. So, putting an article on a directory is not the end result–the article directory is a means to an end.
It’s basically like placing a product of yours in a busy store where everyone can see it. The store gets traffic from many places–some of the traffic is just people stopping by spur of the moment, but other traffic comes from more targeted sources–from an ad the store placed in the newspaper or on TV.
So, bringing it back to Article Marketing–the article directory is the store, and the article is like your product.
You will get people looking at your article simply because they came to the directory and were searching on the directory for certain types of articles, but you will also get people who came to your article via a search on Google.
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